ENEL purchased UK based Tynemouth stand-alone BESS project

Enel announced that it has  purchased the Tynemouth stand-alone BESS (battery energy storage system) project in UK, by acquiring 100% of the shares in Tynemouth Energy Storage Limited from Element Power.

The construction-ready project, which will be developed by Enel’s Global Thermal Generation division, uses a lithium-ion battery with a capacity of 25 MW (12.5 MWh) and is expected to be completed in early 2018. Enel’s overall investment in the project, including construction, is expected to total approximately 20 million euros.

Enel’s Head of Global Thermal Generation division, Enrico Viale said that this transaction marks an important step forward in the growth of their Group in the promising and innovative sector of the stand-alone battery energy storage systems. Due to the increasing role of renewable energy sources, the growing need of grid balancing services and the fast reduction of technology costs, the BESS market is expected to grow exponentially in all geographies in the next years. For this reason, Tynemouth represents for Enel an opportunity to gain experience and strategic knowledge in building such projects, which can then be applied to other markets.

Tynemouth is supported by a four-year Enhanced Frequency Response (EFR) contract with National Grid awarded to the project in last year’s EFR tender to provide grid balancing services. After four years, the project will participate to ancillary services and capacity market tenders.

The EFR contract secured by Element Power that supports the project was one of the best remunerated among those awarded in last year’s EFR tender, with a price of around 12GBP/MWh.